Baldwin awarded Pushcart Prize for poetry

Jamaica Baldwin has been awarded a 2023 Pushcart Prize for her poem “Father Weaver.” Baldwin’s poem will appear in the 2023 edition of The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, due out in November 2022. Originally published in the 2021 issue of RHINO poetry journal, “Father Weaver” was also a first place winner of the RHINO Editors’ Prize.

Founded in 1976, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses series is one of the most honored literary projects in America. Each year, literary magazines and small presses from around the globe nominate works of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction published during the previous year. From the thousands of nominees, only a small fraction—just over 60 in 2022—receive a Pushcart Prize and are published in the annual volume.

Jamaica Baldwin is a poet and Ph.D. student in English focusing on creative writing (poetry), African diasporan literature, and women’s and gender studies. Her first book, Bone Language, is forthcoming from YesYes Books in 2023. She is a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, the 2021 RHINO Editor's Prize winner, and the 2019 winner of the San Miguel de Allende Writers Conference Contest in Poetry. Her work has been supported by Hedgebrook, Furious Flower, and the Jack Straw Writers Program. Before coming to UNL, she earned her B.A. in Afro-American Studies from Smith College and her M.F.A. in poetry from Pacific University.